Convicted killers get 17 years in plea deal

They originally received 53 years to life prior to ruling being overturned

Months after a judge overturned the murder convictions of two East Contra Costa men, citing the prosecution's violations of the new Racial Justice Act, both defendants have been re-sentenced to 17 years in state prison through plea deals.

Gary Bryant Jr. and Diallo Jackson had both originally been sentenced to life in prison without a chance of parole for decades, after being convicted in 2017 of murder and gang enhancements in the shooting death of 23-year-old Pittsburg resident Kenneth Wayne Cooper. Both men pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter in exchange for the new sentences, according to court records.

The new plea deals were finalized in late January and Jackson and Bryant were subsequently re-sentenced to state prison. Bryant is serving his sentence in Salinas Valley State Prison, while Jackson is in Solano State Prison. With credit for time served, both could be eligible for parole before the decade's end. The new deal does not include gang enhancements.

Contra Costa Judge Clare Maier, who oversaw the trial, overturned the convictions last October in a 71-page ruling, writing that the trial prosecutor, thenDeputy District Attorney Chris Walpole, used “racially coded language and evoked racial stereotypes of African American men as more likely to engage in acts of violence” during his closing argument, by repeatedly using the term “pistol whip.” She also ruled that the prosecutor's use of “drug rip” likely inflamed implicit bias within the jury.

One of the tipping points for Maier, according to her written decision, was the use of the n-word by the prosecutor, defense attorneys and a police gang expert when quoting rap lyrics written by one of the defendants. Prosecutors argued that the lyrics showed the defendants' gang ties and helped to discredit Bryant's claims the killing was an act of self defense.

The judge found the prosecution violated the state's Racial Justice Act, a law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year that al

lows convicted persons to petition the court if racial bias was proven to be present in their case.

Cooper was killed as he sat in a car on a July 2014 afternoon at an apartment complex on Delta Fair Boulevard in Antioch. Prosecutors called it a robbery that escalated into a shootout. The defense offered differing rebuttals: Jackson's lawyer argued that he wasn't at the shooting, while Bryant's attorney insisted the shooting was in self-defense, noting that Bryant was also shot and wounded.

In a brief statement statement to this newspaper, Bryant's lawyer, Evan Kuluk, praised recent “meaningful reforms” that “address some of the very issues that adversely impacted the fairness of the trial,” including a law requiring a second trial for gang enhancements, a law designed to reduce discrimination during jury selection and the state's Racial Justice Act.

Jackson and Diallo, who are Black, argued on appeal that Walpole had violated a landmark Supreme Court case by dismissing every Black person from the jury pool. In 2019, a trio of First Appellate District justices who ruled the dismissals were legal, but the ruling included a blistering concurrence that called for new laws to better identify racism during jury selection. After the appeal ruling, Kuluk filed a motion to set aside the convictions under the Racial Justice Act, sending the case back before Maier.